Technology and Technical Efficiency in the Soviet Union: Dominant Patterns of Constrained Optimization in a Noncompetitive Economic Regime,

This essay focuses on three issues. It attempts to show that the Soviet economic system does not foster technical inefficiency, although it does cause interfirm and intersectoral factor misallocational. Second, it is argued that the principal cause of technological distortion in the Soviet regime is the institutionalization of noncompetitiveness, a phenomena closely associated with the abolition to private ownership of the means of production. And, third it is maintained, on theoretical grounds, that the technological losses borne by the system fall primarily on the civilian consumer sector, leaving military technology relatively unimpaired. It is concluded that system-induced technological shortcoming will not significantly impede aggregate Soviet growth or the continuous improvement of Soviet weapons capabilities in the Eighties.